Steve Bannon Once Wrote A Shakespearean Rap Musical About The LA Riots

The musical, which was Bannon’s attempt at remaking William Shakespeare‘s Cariolanus into a rap musical about the 1992 Los Angeles riot, was recently discovered by NowThis who also organized a full table read of the manuscript.

Captured in a 20-minute long video, the reading of Bannon’s The Thing I Am finds actors and actresses reciting lines such as “South Central is the belly; you, ni**as, its mutinous member”; and “Abandon hope all ye who f**k with her.” There is also this one said by actress Nyima Funk who begins, “Bitch, please! It becomes a man. Breasts nursing look no lovelier than when a forehead spits forth blood,” only to break character and add “Sorry, this is the first time I’ve ever said anything like this. We should talk like this more often.”

If you needed further information to come to the conclusion of how bad this musical is, it also includes characters who are named Baby Gangsta and Stink Eye.

However, the reading is worth at least one watch, considering NowThis got Gary Anthony Williams (the voice behind The Boondocks‘ Uncle Ruckus) and Cedric Yarbrough (the voice behind The Boondocks‘ Tom Dubois and Colonel H. Stinkmeaner) to voice some of the characters.

“I do think [Bannon] was trying to understand race relations and take this overseer look of ‘Here’s what you’re not seeing.’ I think he thought he had a greater understanding than the people who were going through what they were going through,” Williams said in an interview with the Washington Post. “Now, whether he had the tools to do that or not is open to everyone’s interpretation. My answer would be no, spelled in pretty large letters, with a very curly font…Again, I think Steve Bannon thought he had figured out black people, much in the way of Trump: ‘Carnage! Chicago is carnage…American carnage! That I have the answer. That if you could listen to me, this can fix that.’”